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HP Making Major Changes To WebOS, Selling PC Business

08-18-2011, 04:20 PM

Phoronix: HP Making Major Changes To WebOS, Selling PC Business

With Hewlett Packard's Q3'2011 earnings that were just released, they have just revealed a couple major news items. HP has confirmed the news that began spreading this morning that they are looking to sell or spin off its personal computer business. They also confirmed they are looking to buy Autonomy Corporation. The surprise news, however, is that HP will be discontinuing operations for webOS devices such as the TouchPad and Pre smart-phone...

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Basically WebOS never had a chance against Android because there are too few apps. Samsung has Bada too, i dont know why they still sell it when they already sell Android devices. Buying Palm was definitely lost money. I am not sure if selling the pc devision is a good or bad idea, Lenovo just bought Medion to get even bigger. So basically it should be possible to sell still lots of systems, not everybody will use a tablet. But most likely they still want to sell expensive server systems but not the low profit products. When the market is bad and you have to sell devices later with a discount then this is certainly something you want to avoid.

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Basically WebOS never had a chance against Android because there are too few apps. Samsung has Bada too, i dont know why they still sell it when they already sell Android devices. Buying Palm was definitely lost money. I am not sure if selling the pc devision is a good or bad idea, Lenovo just bought Medion to get even bigger. So basically it should be possible to sell still lots of systems, not everybody will use a tablet. But most likely they still want to sell expensive server systems but not the low profit products. When the market is bad and you have to sell devices later with a discount then this is certainly something you want to avoid.

I think they should never have pushed WebOS devices to consumers, to instead focus on the enterprise. All bases covered from server to mobile phone, and since I'm wary of the "all external cloud" approach, I think there could have been some tremendous potential for service integration.
Instead they pretty much throw the towel after failing to eat the iPad's lunch overnight at Best Buy... What the hell...

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Like we didn't see this one coming. If Palm had this out (with backwards compatibility with palmos software) back in 2006 (when it was *supposed* to be ready....), they could have dominated the world. When HP gobbled up Palm, that was really the final death of palm. HP can talk all they want about what they bought, but they're a bloated giant and act too slow to actually compete. HP should have acquired Palm back in 04/05 while it was dying, but not yet dead. What they got was/is worthless.

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HP can talk all they want about what they bought, but they're a bloated giant and act too slow to actually compete.

IMO, that's not HP's problem.... HP's problem is that they're afraid to get their feet wet..

Remember when the PS3 was released and Sony accepted the fact that they would lose money on every PS3 sold, just so that they can guarantee themselves a position in the console market? HP is not willing to take that kind of risk.. The biggest enemy to HP, is HP itself..

HP expects to make money on every product that they sell.. When they're late to market, that just isn't going to happen no matter what market it is...

What HP should have done, was just slashed the prices on the WebOS tablets and devices to the point where they were so cheap that people who were undecided between an Android device or Apple device would have had no qualms about just walking out and buying a WebOS device in the meantime while they watch the fight between Android and Apple from afar...

Micrsoft with their mobile OS was later into the market than HP was, but unlike HP, Microsoft is willing to take a beating just to ensure their place in the market.. Microsoft has been signing deals left and right with all these tablet manufs. and phone manufs... Google was afraid Microsoft's deals would push Google right out of the market and that's why they bought Motorola... To guarantee that no matter what Microsoft does behind the scenes, Google can keep on making their Android products.. Meanwhile, companies like Nokia have already dropped their Linux mobile OSs in favor of the Windows mobile OS because the incentives and offloading of risk Microsoft offers in their contracts are just too tempting. All the companies are afraid to take risks because of the economy, except for Microsoft, Apple and Google.

HP saw the risks and folded.. It's as simple as that.. They couldn't take the heat so they got out of the farmhouse... They didn't have the balls to stand up in a battlefield with players like Apple, Google, and Microsoft.. Which is probably going to be a HUGE mistake for HP in the long run as they'll always just be a maker of cheap Chinese trinkets and have little room for innovation because of it.

HP was getting up on stage last year, talking about how much they want to be an innovator and bring new technologies onto the market that no other company has done before.. But when the time for that comes, they just don't have the balls to take that kind of risk and stand by it while it takes a beating by players who beat HP to market (Apple, Google).

HP should have kept going with WebOS and just swallowed the extra costs to get entry into the market... I'm a very strong believer of that and this is probably the biggest mistake HP has made in a long time...

HP has the perfect product lineup to blow Google and Apple out of the market, simply because HP had the capability to underprice ALL of the competitors because the HP products were much cheaper to manuf... A lot of people say HP lost because their products were inferior, but the reality is they were just too overpriced for a market entry.. If they sold them for half what they did, they would have been the most popular devices on the market out there and they'd gain the developer community that they'd need to solidify their position of market dominance..

HP did a lot of things right.... Right up until the end where they tried to guarantee that they would get a fat profit on all the products sold which pretty much killed their market entry product... They killed it themselves because they overpriced it... HP had the the perfect opportunity to undercut all the competitors who insisted on making expensive electronics and passing high price tags onto customers.. There is nobody to blame for this colossal failure, except HP..

I don't think they botched WebOS in any shape or form.. They screwed up everything by not pricing their entry level product properly and so they never really gained market entry...

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The same open source developers that released tools and rootkits to run newer versions of Android on older phones.. They're all ordering HP Touchpad tablets and are looking forward to porting Android to it.

HP has released the source code of the Linux packages that they've modified..

So there's some SERIOUS open-source programming talent looking into these HP tablets now.. They had generally avoided them because of the high price tag, lack of sales, lack of demand, lack of consumer interest, etc, etc....

They've already confirmed that the Linux kernel that HP ships their tablets with is alreay compiled to be running Android.. So it should be a piece of cake..

So if people were hesitant about buying these Touchpads because HP is dropping WebOS support.. WORRY NOT! For there will be Android!!!